


Midday, or Common Things

by Chromat1cs



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Banter, Drinking & Talking, Implied/Referenced Sex, Jaskier is big Heart Eyes energy and nobody else gives a single shit, M/M, Mentions of Yennefer, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Taverns, but it's okay because Geralt gives a shit, implied polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22546723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chromat1cs/pseuds/Chromat1cs
Summary: After a trying contract, Jaskier does what he does best: pretties up the truth. Or, in Geralt’s own words, fucking downright lies about it.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 19
Kudos: 291





	Midday, or Common Things

**Author's Note:**

> Tadaaaaaa, I'm following my own heart and diving into Witcher fic after years of adoring this series to pieces. My headcanons are a big muddle of games/books/television canon, so I hope you like them~ I'm just as weak for Geralt/Yen as I am for Geralt/Jaskier, and I will never apologize for that :>
> 
> I hope you enjoy, thanks for stopping by!

A fucking drink.

It’s what he’s been wanting since sunup, wanting since he first smelled the stink of the fens rising up around him, wanting distantly with the grit of his own blood between his teeth with his heels dug deep into the mud and the dead grass—wanting as he finally dispelled the gods-be-damned creature into dust, shrieking and writhing in the royal hue of his Yrden wards, and collapsed down onto his back in that same mud, graveyard mud, breathing hard through his nose despite the stink and the cloy and the overwhelming _shit_ of it all. And especially wanting it since Jaskier trotted up on horseback as though nothing at all were wrong, his doublet open and fluttering in some perfectly vulgar incongruity to Geralt’s general muddied savagement, and _Well done!_ the lout had called—sang, really, nothing of his is ever _not_ a fucking song— _Watched the whole mess from the road, you’re moving more quickly, I think._

 _Fuck quickly,_ Geralt had growled, pawing a spatter of the constant, fetid mud from above his left eye, _at least I’m moving._

 _I’d have helped, but I think you may have just bowled me over._ Then Jaskier was grinning down at him from horseback, the pretty chestnut he’d begged for a handsome discount from the stablemaster in the last town over with his suavest smile—something more overt than the grin he’d shone down on Geralt, extending a perfectly clean hand down to Geralt. _But I_ can _help find us some refreshment._

And so finally Geralt is a-horse, Roach trotting easily over the summer-mud wheel ruts in the road and mouthing at her bit much in the same way Geralt feels the intent need to get a drink in his mouth, and gratefully eyeing the village coming up through the trees thinning out just ahead of the path.

“That,” Jaskier’s voice lights from just beside him, “was truly a bout to behold.”

Geralt just barely stays from rolling his eyes. “It was just a noonwraith. You said the same thing about the drowners I took care of last week.”

“Some of us are unused to watching someone whirl around with a pair of swords and emerge with all their limbs intact. Can you blame me?”

Geralt keeps his eyes fixed on the ratty tavern sign beginning to come into view and settles for giving Jaskier nothing but a quiet mutter of a grunt in response. He’s still covered in drying mud, probably stinks of death and soil, and can almost taste the pepper vodka on his tongue already as he rolls the tip of is along the tang of blood on his gums left over from his Swallow potions. Thankfully, Jaskier takes the cue and keeps quiet until they board their horses.

“A drink, perhaps?” The bard says with a peculiar spark behind his eyes in the shade of the half-stable, a shaft of midday light catching his hair with a jaunt that only Jaskier could have conjured. Something in Geralt buckles just a bit, just as it always does, when he marks the way Jaskier hitches his shoulder up ever so slightly as though his lute is biting through his very skin to be touched. Geralt sighs and nods once.

“A fucking drink.”

He leads the way into the tavern and the creature comforts of getting back to civilization after a hard-won job ebb into all of Geralt’s chipped edges. The cozy interior is middle-full with a couple locals huddled up around the bartop, several of the tables near the opened-wide summertime windows cleared for a long, quiet sit. A few drinkers shoot him the beginnings of sour looks to match what is undoubtedly a much sourer smell from Geralt’s sodden armor, but their glares and glowers stutter when they see him in full; ashen hair, golden eyes, carven frown, all of him sharpened and honed with singular purpose to just sweep through village to village, a living blade who—

_“Hearken, all with hearts brave enough and ears clean enough to listen!”_

Geralt clenches his jaw and stares ahead at the far wall of the tavern as Jaskier’s voice rings out in the comfortable murmur, immediately plaguing it into silence.

_“Before you stands Geralt of Rivia, witcher extraordinaire, slayer of beasts, banisher of the noonwraith in your northern wood! Cheer his strength, laud his skill, fill his belly with drink and his ego with bravery for his next contract! Hail, witcher!”_

A handful of painfully silent seconds tick past, not even the soft clamor of pewterware breaking its awkward membrane. Geralt look at Jaskier in his periphery, one open hand flung up into the air like a pennant to be unfurled with the invisible raiment of the school of the wolf, and he finds both embarrassment and affection icepicking his guts until the proprietress makes a rude scoff.

“Witcher or no, ye pay full price for a drink.”

The twist of offense always manages to look pretty, somehow, in the knit of Jaskier’s brows. “This man just _saved your r—”_

Geralt thwacks a handful of florens down onto the counter and looks pointedly at the rack of bottles just behind the bar. “Excuse him, madam. Two vodkas, if you please, and two stews as well.”

The woman eyes him warily, first his dishevelment and then his coin. She spits on the floor. “Ye expect me to feed a pair of emperor’s dogs?”

Holding in a winded sigh, Geralt pinches his mouth closer shut and matches the woman’s fierce look as though staring down a fiend. “I’m a witcher,” he says evenly, “we hold no alliance.”

“And what for him?” She says _him_ much in the same manner one might say _that thing_ while looking askance at a stain on the floor, her sharp chin jutting up to indicate Jaskier just over Geralt’s shoulder. Geralt stays himself from glancing but has the perfect picture in his mind, the gaudiness of Nilfgaardian splendor hanging from every seam of the bard’s clothing from his last trip into the city with a particularly fat purse of earnings he managed to squirrel out of the gentry there for nothing but warbling at a few of their fetes. 

“We’re the same,” Geralt finds himself explaining with reigned patience, “we’ll take coin wherever we can get it. He simply happened to take his last serving from a ballroom full of Nilfgaardian idiots who think a song is worth as much as that finery he wears.”

The woman narrows her eyes at him for another moment but seems mollified by the answer, the slow destruction of the empire from the inside out by draining their coin steadily for objectively useless things, and turns to the bottles and the bubbling stew pot as she sets to serving them both. Geralt turns on his own heel, still frowning, and finds Jaskier looking at him with pointed doubt.

“You’re a very bitter old man, do you know that?” Jaskier whispers with a tone that is very much not a whisper at all. The man couldn’t whisper if there were an arrow at his heart. “I’ll have you know, the songs I gave those uppity bastards was _absolutely_ worth ‘this finery.’”

As if in punctuation, Jaskier tidily sinches shut the bottom stays of his doublet. Gerlat tries not to unconsciously mourn the loss of the view of his tunic beneath and settles instead for heeling over to a table and sitting heavily. Jaskier makes a show of brushing dust from the stool at the place across from Geralt before furling himself into his own sit, knees crossed just so and his lute lowered gingerly to lean against his feet. Geralt sets him with a look once Jaskier finally has his fingers laced over his knee and his head tipped expectantly to one side. “What,” Geralt mutters.

“I’m just looking at you,” Jaskier’s voice airy with the sense of put-on artistry as he narrows his eyes slightly; “trying to come up with something satisfying, ‘yum-ta-tum, the froth of battle,’ all of that. You know how it goes.”

Geralt sets his teeth. “Yes, unfortunately I do know. And why, praytell, the fuck are you writing a song about me?”

The smile Jaskier sends him is saccharine in a very knowing way. Geralt’s stomach grips, not unpleasantly. “Why the fuck do I ever write songs about you in the first place?”

Drawing breath to respond in a hiss, Geralt pauses as the proprietress sweeps past and _plonk_ s their drinks and stew before the two of them. He has his glass to his lips and drinking deeply on a sip before the woman’s skirts are even done brushing against the side of the table, and Jaskier is still watching him with his own tidy sip on the edge of the crude horn cup when he lowers his arm back down to the table. “It isn’t as though I felled a giant,” Geralt settles for grumbling.

“Oh, but that was a _good one,”_ Jaskier sighs, self-impressment high in his cheeks as he grins at the memory of one of his more popular ballads; _Skellige snowfall, the winds, they were high/And Geralt the Witcher intent to the sky;/The mountain was steep and the stakes, even more,/And so the wolf down from Rivia settled his score._ Geralt leans back in his seat and takes another deep quaff of his drink instead of reluctantly agreeing.

“I just don’t want you wasting your precious breath on a noonwraith,” Geralt says with a shrug. “They’re as common here as nekkers are in the bogs, plague snarling up wedding plans and all that, but I suppose it is the sort of romantic shit you tend to like.”

Jaskier’s lips are pursed with challenge when Geralt looks up at him again, hitting home as expected with his tone on _precious breath._ This is always the way Geralt prefers to do things after finishing a contract with Jaskier alongside him, dancing around one another’s sore spots in the aftermath until they both press just close enough and collapse into a lovely splaying-out of their repairing in the upstairs of wherever they’ve saught their respite. Here, with the food and the drink and Geralt still reeking of combat, is the sizing up. The repartee. The foreplay. He clenches his fist under the table atop his knee, his glove protesting with a slight squeeze and crusting-off of dried mud, and takes another sip of his drink as he waits for Jaskier to reply.

“There is plenty of ‘romantic shit’ I tend to like, yes, you’re right,” Jaskier says lightly. He takes a sip on his soup and makes a small sound of approval around the spoonful before wiping at the corners of his lips with his thumb and forefinger—Geralt tries to ignore the way Jaskier looks right at him as he does it. “So it’s perfectly fertile ground for a song, and I’m going to write it regardless of your permission.”

“What’s new,” Geralt says under his breath, just loudly enough for Jaskier to hear him. The bard grins widely.

“If this one gets me another doublet, I’ll be sure to consult you on the colors this time.”

“Black and silver.” Geralt doesn’t have to look up from his stew bowl to know that Jaskier is still smiling at him, a softened shape of it on his mouth. 

“Yennefer has poisoned your tastes.”

“In more ways than one, but I don’t recall asking for your input there.”

Jaskier leans one elbow on the table, props his chin on his fist; “Neither do I. How is she, by the way?”

Geralt raises his eyebrows dryly, recalling the last whirlwind of a week he spent with Yen in the middle of nowhere as they begged answers out of the fabric of reality together; magic and steel, steel and magic. “Fine, as barbed as ever. She says hello.” She had said nothing of the sort, but the camaraderie between her and Jaskier is always there in some strange way regardless of whether or not anyone addresses it directly. Geralt supposes it’s one of the reasons why he feels so at home with either of them, so comfortable to just _be_ when all is said and done—swords sheathed, spells quieted, lute strings quiet.

“Tell her I say hello right back, I hope she’s been well,” Jaskier hums, watching Geralt with somewhat of a dreamy glint drummed up behind the gentle cool of his irises. Geralt swallows, shifts slightly in his seat, and nods.

“Noted.”

A companionable silence takes over as Geralt feels true hunger rise up in him, the voracity of a battle hard won and a contract to collect on later, and he tucks into his meal with singular purpose. Jaskier eats as well and Geralt can see him looking across the table with calm observance— _yum-ta-tum,_ pulling those tunes out of the air every time like its own sort of magic, he does Geralt far too much credit, truly—but ignores it as best he can, only letting the very back of his mind race ahead to what awaits in whichever creaking bed or palette they can find for themselves later when the tension of a job well done catches up and they both chase the need to bathe and massage and fuck it away.

Geralt is very good at the first of those things, and Jaskier holds the crown for being an absolute champion at the other two. He would never admit it aloud, but it’s more than most of the reason Geralt agrees to letting Jaskier accompany him to the ends of every hovel of The Continent and back. One might say from the outside it benefits Geralt to have all the ballads that have resulted from the travels, but he keeps the truth much closer to chest: the ballads pale in comparison to the music the bard can make with his body, fuck the lute.

Their thought patterns seem aligned, as Geralt senses Jaskier reaching under the table to lay a hand on his thigh just in time to catch it in one glove and rub his thumb along the fine, well-trained tendons of Jaskier’s strumming hand. A small patch of color flushes along Jaskier’s collar, and Geralt takes quiet pleasure in feeling Jaskier’s heart tick up just a few beats as well. “Well,” Jaskier murmurs simply. His stew lays empty, his drink half-done. He raises one straw-colored eyebrow and cocks a smart little smile that goes right into the innermost annals of Geralt’s heart and pulls very steadily.

“Well,” Geralt says, his own voice low and graveled.

Jaskier adjusts slightly in his seat and shifts his hand forward under the table, obstinate through Geralt’s grip to touch him just above his knee as intended in spite of Geralt’s heightened senses that catch him at every pass every time—but, Geralt knows, he adores it. “Shall we find out if this place has lodging, and perhaps a very large bath?”

Geralt lets a very small smile infect his lips—tired, exasperated, more than slightly sapped from his potions earlier still working their way out of his bloodstream, but content and, for the moment, safe across from the man who represents nearly every one of Geralt’s polar opposites—and leans every so slightly nearer across the table. “Do you mean to join me, messere?”

“I mean to serenade you with my newest piece of genius,” Jaskier hums, his intrigue soft and meant simply for the two of them which makes it somehow even better, “before I may very well take my own turn scrubbing away the grave soil.”

“Did you take your own tumble into the dirt, or should I take that to mean what I hope it does?”

“Monster hunter’s choice.”

Jaskier winks at him, the bastard, and Geralt gives him a flat look offset completely by the flash of excitement he feels shoot into his pupils as they dilate. “Go then,” he murmurs, squeezing Jaskier’s hand gently and pulling him a hair nearer—just barely, but just enough to make Jaskier’s cheeks pink just the same as his collar—“Ask about lodging before I get impatient.”

Geralt shouldn’t feel compelled to laugh at the way Jaskier scrambles into a stand and almost dashes his lute to the floor in mad, twanging clatter as he has in the past after just a touch too much drink, but nonetheless he holds in a jot of laughter when Jaskier canters over to the bar and jangles a fresh handful of coins from the inner pocket of his shirt. Geralt finishes his drink in one deep sip, rolls his shoulders back, and looks forward to privacy; quietude, peace, the semblance of order he always gets with Jaskier that makes him comfortable enough to unstrap his swords and shut his eyes for once.

This, he thinks to himself, is a fine enough way to live.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, feel free to say hi [on tumblr](https://chromat1cs.tumblr.com/) ^^


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